Accepted guess Not a possible answer B tier for first-turn info

HOSEY

HOSEY is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

To bagsy; to shotgun (make a claim).

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it HOHZEE.

Rhymes with POSEY MOSEY COSEY

Use HOSEY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.0% of possible answers.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How HOSEY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HOSEY as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 88.1% of games, misses completely in 11.9%, and leaves about 144 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,163 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe HOSEY used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

4.84 Entropy (bits)
144 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HOSEY performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.74 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#9,163 Rank among openers
Opening with HOSEY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #9,163 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
816
4 guesses
1,184
5 guesses
266
6 guesses
30

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
39%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

HOSEY can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

329 answers
284 answers
179 answers
172 answers
145 answers
141 answers
118 answers
82 answers
75 answers
68 answers
51 answers
50 answers
45 answers
45 answers
45 answers
38 answers
34 answers
32 answers
29 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for HOSEY; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

H4O1S1E1Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Strategy after playing HOSEY

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to HOSEY.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HOSEY:

14% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
12% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
8% chance
Suggested:
RAILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

13.8% →
RAILE 5.27 bits
11.9% →
TRAIN 6.04 bits
7.5% →
RAILE 4.28 bits
7.2% →
TALON 5.03 bits
6.1% →
DAILY 4.15 bits
5.9% →
SLANT 5.26 bits
4.9% →
SLART 4.86 bits
3.4% →
MIRTH 4.63 bits
3.1% →
CARNE 4.14 bits
2.9% →
BRANE 4.21 bits

Research on HOSEY

Game-tree analysis and word research for HOSEY, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with HOSEY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,380 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with HOSEY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74; proven optimal play reaches 3.72. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HOSEY sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).